Mark Gruenberg, editor
Washington DC / 312-806- 4825 / paiunionnews@gmail.com, paiunionnews@yahoo.com
November 17, 2017
OPEIU ROLLS OUT DIGITAL ID PROTECTION BENEFIT
NEW YORK (PAI)—In what may be a first for organized labor, the Office and Professional Employees have gone to bat for their vulnerable members by rolling out a comprehensive – and very tight – digital identity protection program. The rollout comes as ID theft and worse increasingly hits the headlines and concerns consumers and workers nationwide. A PowerPoint presentation from
InfoArmor, which is providing the benefit to OPEIU members, showed 15.4 million people were victims of identity fraud last year, a number already exceeded with data breaches so far this year. OPEIU’s sponsored program protects against identity fraud and identity theft.
Fraud is worse, speakers on the union’s webinar about the new benefit said. But identity theft is bad enough, with 80 million people suffering ID theft from Anthem BlueCross BlueShield and even more from Home Depot in recent months. Identity fraud involves your name, address, Social Security number, driver’s license and other private data being stolen and used by someone else – and against
you.
OPEIU’s sponsored program, with InfoArmor, includes 1-on- 1 relationships between a digital ID victim and a company “recovery advocate,” from start to finish of fixing the problem. Besides safeguarding individuals’ digital identity, the firm will also
monitor traffic on the web and on social media, both for its consumers and to detect potential dangers.
It’ll pay particular attention to compromised machines, surveillance of the Internet for “black market forms,” detection of phishing networks and discovery of exploited websites. It also monitors the major social media providers “and told Yahoo about its problem eight months” before the news became public, the firm’s presenter told OPEIU members.
And every month, each OPEIU member will receive an all-clear message – if everything is clear. If someone’s digital identity is compromised before that, the firm will notify the victim immediately. Besides acting against identity theft and fraud, the firm contracted with OPEIU to provide members with digital identity reports, to help members reduce unwanted Internet solicitations and e-mails, and to provide $1 million in identity theft insurance to cover such expenses as identity repair, lawyers’ fees and expenses for fixing compromised accounts.
“Everyone who’s a member is automatically covered” by basic anti-ID theft actions from the firm, said union Deputy Communications Director Suzanne Fenech. “If you want to go even deeper than that, you sign up.”